1. Field of the Invention
A method and a housing assembly for farming members of the Phylum Arthropoda in a centralized location to collect silk therefrom.
2. Description of the Related Art
Members of the Phylum Arthropoda, especially referring to spiders, are able to dispense different types of silk from their bodies. The various types of silk are used by the spiders for different purposes. For example, one type of silk excreted from the ampullate glands is commonly referred to as a dragline and is used when the spider ventures from its web. The dragline is stronger than the other types of silk and the spider can climb back up the dragline if there is danger. The various types of silk have specific properties that make them useful for various applications, such as medical, pharmaceutical, or commercial applications. One medical application may use the silk for sutures because the silk is anti-bacterial and biodegradable, while also having very good tensile properties. The silk may also be used as artificial ligaments and to reinforce torn tendons. One commercial application may incorporate the silk into garments for replacing Kevlar vests currently used in ballistic protection.
However, extracting the silk from the spiders has been difficult. It requires large numbers of spiders to produce a large quantity of the silk to be commercially practical. Therefore, other methods of making the silk have been researched instead of collecting the silk directly from the spiders. One method has been to genetically alter goats so that the milk produced by the goat includes enzymes used to fabricate the silk. The enzymes are extracted from the goat's milk and then the silk is made from the extracted enzymes. Other methods have employed bacteria and the like to produce the enzymes for combining to make the silk. The silk made by these methods is useable; however, the silk typically does not have the same physical properties as the silk directly extracted from the spiders.
Various related art references disclose that it is impractical to collect the silk directly from the spiders. The silk produced by the spiders has a thickness of about 1/100th of the thickness of a human hair and therefore many spiders must be used to collect large amounts of silk. It is known by those skilled in the art that the spiders are very territorial and exhibit cannibalistic tendencies when housed in close proximity with one another. Moreover, the references state that when many spiders are left together, only one will remain, as it will have killed the other spiders.
In order to farm the spiders, current methods employ separate cages that keep the spiders separate from one another. However, it has been discovered that the silk produced by the spiders in captivity does not produce the same high quality silk as produced by spiders in their natural environment. It is believed that housing the spiders in enclosed, separate cages increases the stress of the spiders and the increased stress results in the silk having inferior physical properties relative to silk produced from spiders in their natural environment.